


Flipping Turtles

by kaijawest



Series: A Work in Progress [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27318052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijawest/pseuds/kaijawest
Summary: Foggy deals with an increasingly volatile Matt.
Series: A Work in Progress [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994044
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	1. A Meeting With Maggie

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after season three and after previous fic in series August 26th, can probably be read on on its own though.

“I’m not concerned. Consider this the call BEFORE I get concerned,” Brett says, his tone serious. “I sent one of my officers for remedial training on use of force last week. He had two incidences in the course of a month that caused about as much damage as Daredevil does before midnight any given night lately.”

“Yikes,” Foggy says, shifting the phone to his other ear.

“Its easier to get a statement from a perp when he’s just had a few teeth knocked out rather than his jaw broken. You understand what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying its escalating?” Foggy asks, dreading the possible answer. He’s always been worried about this happening one day. He’s afraid to even ask the next question. “Please tell me nobody has died.”

“No. But there’s some pretty serious injuries that are going to be lifelong problems.”

Yeah, this is bad, Foggy admits to himself.

“Get your client under control, Foggy,” Brett says in no uncertain terms.

“Daredevil isn’t-“

Brett cuts him off before Foggy has a chance to explain.

“I need him to dial it back a couple notches. I’m sure you don’t want him to lose all police support.”

“You aside I’m not sure how much he has now,” Foggy says quietly.

“More than you’d think. A LOT of people believe in what he does. Not always the WAY he does it but …” Brett trails off before starting again more confidently. “His job is going to get a lot harder if he riles the force against him. I don’t even need to mention public perception as well do I?”

“Okay,” Foggy says, trying to keep his tone neutral.

“Talk to your CLIENT,” Brett says. The way he emphasizes the word tells Foggy that Brett is very much aware that any connection Daredevil has to Nelson, Murdock and Page is not actually of the attorney/client variety. “You don’t want to get a call from me when I really AM concerned.” His tone certainly makes it sound like he means it.

“Thanks Brett, I will.”

“See that you do,” Brett says, hanging up.

………………….

“You remember me mentioning Brett before?”

“Your childhood friend? “ Maggie confirms.

“Uh, friend, yeah, I guess,” Foggy says, not entirely sure that how he’d define their relationship these days. “I think he might know who Matt is,” he admits. He’s explained the earlier phone conversation to Maggie. They’re walking a winding path around the church grounds, her arm linked in his. He’s been by to talk to her countless times in the past few months but can’t actually remember when she started taking his arm like that. It reminds Foggy of his own mom cause she liked to do that too and while he’s happy for her to enjoy retirement in Florida, he misses her dearly. This isn’t the same. Talking with Maggie is a minefield compared to easy chats with his own mom. Still, this really helps in so many ways and he likes that she easily links her arm in his.

“Is that going to be a problem?” she asks.

“I don’t THINK so. I mean, he seems like he wants to not acknowledge it. Kept calling Daredevil my client.”

“So what are you worried about?”

“How am I supposed to tell Matt to stop hurting people? I mean, I know he’s not going to stop no matter what I say. But how do I tell him he needs to do less damage? I’m pretty sure whatever I say he’s either going to freak out and get worse or tell me I don’t have any say in this.”

“Possibly,” Maggie agrees.

“Or he’s gonna end up feeling so guilty and conflicted it’ll make him nuts.” ‘MORE nuts,’ Foggy adds silently.

“As his friend you do owe it to him to point out what he’s doing wrong. This could cause a lot of problems for him, for the both of you. He may well not even be aware there’s a problem here and Brett has explained why there is.”

“Yeah,” Foggy says with a sigh, already dreading the conversation with Matt.

“But you are not responsible for what he does with that.” Maggie stops, takes Foggy’s hands in her own. “You can talk to him, you can support him, but there’s nothing you can do to stop him, you understand that, right?”  
Foggy is actually quite aware that nothing can stop hurricane Matt.

“I don’t know how to bring this up with him. You know how sometimes he’s so open, so receptive and ready to talk over hard stuff. He’s come so far but…”

And its true. Foggy is amazed how much less closed off Matt has been since he returned from the dead. Its like he left behind a part of himself under Midland Circle that was so use to putting up walls and blocks and avoiding every difficult conversation. Unfortunately, in some strange exchange, he’s also become far less predictable and controlled. Maggie knows all this. She might not have a basis for comparison since by in large she’s known Matt as an adult only after these changes occured, but they’ve talked at length about his more recent Jekyll and Hyde tendencies. She knows it’s a crapshoot whether Matt’s going to be open, honest and communicative or he’s going to snap and explode. They’ve talked at some length about Matt’s increased volatility. Not that either of them has come to any kind of solution.

“He’s just so much less…” Foggy struggles to put it in the right words despite how much they’ve talked about it. “Stable?” it comes out like a question, like even now he’s struggling to explain it.

Maggie sighs, nodding sadly as they resume walking. “Then you better time your conversation very carefully.”

She doesn’t volunteer to discuss it with Matt herself. Foggy is just a little disappointed she’s not jumping in to save him, not that he really expected her to. “He’s so tense lately. Like pretty much all the time. I know he’s invested in work and, well, everything else. I just wish he’d relax a bit, act like he’s not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Maybe he just needs to get laid,” Maggie says, tone light and joking.

“That might actually be exactly what he needs,” Foggy admits. “AHH jeez, sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about stuff like that with you.”

“Because I’m a nun or because Matthew is my son?” Maggie asks. She seems thoroughly amused by Foggy’s sudden discomfort. Foggy thinks she enjoys making people squirm just a bit.

“Yes!” Foggy says, can’t help himself from smiling.

“I brought it up,” Maggie points out. “I assume he’s not seeing anyone?”

“I don’t think so. He’d probably tell me if he was. You know when he and Electra broke up that first time, when we were in school, it just about killed him. I was so scared he wouldn’t bounce back. You have no idea how depressed he got.”

“I can imagine,” Maggie says darkly. While she was not big on details, she had told Foggy in general terms how despondent Matt had become staying at the church after his accident. And Foggy is aware the level of depression and inability to function Maggie herself had experienced when Matt was a baby. Foggy realizes that yes, she probably can imagine the type of screwed up Electra had left Matt. “Do you think he’s depressed now?”

“No. That’s not what I meant. I just think he’s stuck,” Foggy says. Matt can’t let Electra go, can’t deal with losing Stick. Again. Can’t completely dig himself out of that metaphorical grave under tonnes of concrete.  
“Then keep throwing him a rope so he can haul himself out of this if he chooses,” Maggie advises and Foggy is somehow impressed that her imagery fits well with his. “Now, tell me what happened with Marci and the whole new sofa debacle?”

Extremely thankful for the escape into lighter topics, Foggy gleefully launches into the continuing epic story about his girlfriend.


	2. Our Poor Neighbours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have limited patience for going into details of surroundings when they're not super interesting/relevant - let's pretend the layout of the office is similar to the old one, yeah?

“You talked to my MOTHER about my SEX LIFE!?!” Karen hears Matt yelling. His voice carries all the way down the hallway despite the fact he’s standing in Foggy’s office.

“It wasn’t like that…” Foggy says, volume about half of Matt’s.

Karen enters the office, wisely closing the door to the shared hallway for the neighbour’s sake. It’s not the first time the boys have gotten loud at the office but it is the first time it’s been over something so personal. She’s pretty sure the accountant next door does not want to hear this. 

“Well what was it like then? HUH?” Matt’s still yelling. Karen starts counting down the minutes before Matt chucks something off the desk. Nowadays when he gets upset Matt seems to channel his inner house cat and bat random office supplies off desks in fits of anger. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t such an expensive and destructive habit. He’s certainly never thrown anything AT Foggy or herself, in fact he seems to restrict his meltdowns to hurling objects AWAY from them. Still, its not exactly an encouraging sign that what was once his tightly controlled temper is now let loose on an increasingly frequent basis.

Karen sits down at her desk in the other room, subconsciously shifts her laptop closer to herself and away from Matt. 

“MATT! We just want you to be happy, okay?” Foggy says pleadingly. “You’re so damned tense ALL THE TIME! I was just trying to figure how we could get you to unwind a bit, okay?”

“So what, you and my mom think you’re going to hire me a prostitute?”

Karen immediately wishes she’d arrived five minutes earlier so she could have caught the beginnings of this argument.

“I didn’t say that! And obviously I wouldn’t need to. I watched you screw your way through half of Columbia!”

Karen’s eyebrows shoot up. Foggy is rapidly losing control of the situation and his own temper. 

“I did NOT sleep with half of Columbia!” Matt says, sounding completely indignant.

“A quarter then!”

There’s silence for a moment. Karen thinks for a second how she probably shouldn’t be hearing any of this. Its clearly a personal conversation. But damn, Matt isn’t even objecting to Foggy’s revised claim. Karen is the first to admit she likes to get all the facts and if listening in is how she gets that information she really isn’t terribly bothered by any ethics surrounding that, never has been. Plus, its hardly listening in when its her office too and Foggy and Matt are not exactly keeping their argument quiet.

“You egged me on! How can you possibly be acting like you don’t agree with it now? I mean what the hell? Are you yelling at me because I’m not sleeping around enough or cause I did it too much years ago?”

“I’m not the one yelling,” Foggy says, voice now down to a normal volume. He certainly had been a moment ago but Karen is willing to bet he didn’t start that way.

‘3...2…1,’ Karen silently counts in her head, awaiting the crash of some random object about to get chucked across the room. Somewhat surprisingly Matt stomps out of Foggy’s office instead. He starts, twitchs, as he apparently just now notices Karen is at her desk. But he doesn’t say a word to her, just slams the door on his way out of the office heading for the lobby.

Karen waits about a minute before heading into Foggy’s office. He’s seated at his desk, head in his hands, elbows on the desktop. If she had to come up with one adjective to describe him right now it would be defeated. She walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder, rubs gently. 

“You need to fix this,” she says simply, surprising herself at how much less than comforting that comes out.

“Why are you saying that to me?” Foggy says, head still in his hands, sounding like he very much doesn’t want to take any responsibility for what just went down.

“Because you’re the one here,” Karen says, assigning no blame. ‘And because I don’t think Matt is capable right now,’ she adds in her head.


	3. Late Night Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So let me get this straight: you liked Electra because she was what, difficult?”
> 
> “No Foggy,” Matt says, his expression wistful. “I loved her because she was impossible.”

Foggy doesn’t know what time Matt usually gets home from his nightly patrols. Thankfully its Friday so it doesn’t much matter if he ends up staying up half the night awake waiting. All the same Foggy’s glad he brought two six packs with him. Matt has terrible taste in beer and Foggy knows it would be less than polite to invite himself into Matt’s apartment then spend half the evening stealing his friend’s beers. So by 1 am he finds himself sprawled on Matt’s couch, half a dozen beer bottles decorating the coffee table. He was very nervous about talking with his friend after their blow up at the office earlier. But sitting alone in Matt’s quiet apartment, slowly drinking beer all night, has thankfully mellowed him out considerably. He’s thought it through, come up with a mental battle plan and is ready to calmly talk things over, and possibly apologize if need be. He’s not sorry Matt knows he talked with Maggie. Matt has, a bit grudgingly, made peace with the fact that Foggy meets up with his mom to talk. He probably knows Foggy actually see’s more of her than Matt does himself. There had been a lot of arguing, a number of accusations, a pile of suspicion and hurt feelings all around but they’d eventually got to this point where he is (usually) fine with the fact that Foggy likes to talk with Maggie. But now it seems like there were some topics that need to be avoided for the sake of all parties concerned. They’d barely even talked about it anyway – Foggy really needed to get Matt to understand that the last thing he was doing was having any kind of detailed and weird talks with Maggie about who her son did or didn’t sleep with. 

Foggy hears the rooftop door open and Matt silently enters. In the shadows he can make out a tired looking Daredevil slumping against the railing at the top, bent, forehead on folded arms. He looks like he’s not planning on moving which is weird cause that’s just an awkward place to roost. Matt suddenly jolts up, seems like he only now notices his visitor.

“Foggy,” Matt greets him as he makes his way down the stairs. His tone is neutral which Foggy decides is not a bad sign per say but it doesn’t exactly put him at ease either. “Give me a couple minutes to get changed.” Matt pulls off his mask, heads into his bedroom. He leans back out of the room to adds, “And some of those beers better be for me,” a small smile on his lips.

“You know it,” Foggy says, already feeling the tension releasing from his chest. He heads to the fridge to grab a couple cold ones. 

“How were things out there tonight?” he asks even though he kind of doesn’t want to know. 

“The usual,” Matt says from the bedroom. He comes out a moment later, shrugging into a threadbare hoodie. Before he zips it up Foggy does not miss way his side is red mottled purple. It looks like it hurts and is probably going to look quite a bit worse tomorrow. He assumes Matt can feel his stare when he waves off any concern before it starts. “It’s nothing. You should see the other guy,” smiling like it’s a joke.

Foggy internally cringes as he remembers Brett’s call. ‘No, this is definitely not the time to bring that up,’ he decides. He’ll have to tell Matt what Brett said at some point, and better sooner than later, but he hasn’t figured how to broach that topic. That’s definitely not why he came by tonight. ‘One drama at a time,’ he reminds himself.

Matt settles into a corner of the couch, beer in hand, fluffy plaid throw on his lap.

“You sure you’re okay?” Foggy asks. 

“Tired,” Matt admits, drinking his beer.

“I didn’t mean to keep you up. If you need to get to sleep I understand,” Foggy says really hoping that’s not the case cause he didn’t spend all night waiting around only to leave without talking.

“No, its not like that. I mean the good kind of tired,” Matt explains, squirming lower on the couch, getting more comfortable by stretching out one leg to accommodate his bad hip.

“There is no good kind of tired.” 

“Agree to disagree,” Matt says easily and clearly not spoiling for a fight. “Have you never worn yourself out physically to the point you feel … I don’t know, settled?”

“No, I literally have no idea what that means. Do even remember those couple times I tried to go to the gym? I was miserable afterwards and had to order pizza to drown my sorrows. I would not call that in anyway settled.”

“Aww Foggy, you have no idea what you’re missing,” Matt says fondly, draining his beer.

“Yeah, you can keep all that. But really, if it makes you feel better, more settled, then good.” He gets up and grabs a couple more beers from the fridge, feeling confident now that he’s thankfully managed to find Matt in a good, calm mood. He’d had his questions, arguments and counter-arguments carefully planned out in his head. And he promptly abandons them in favour of just talking with his best friend.

“I’m sorry we ended up arguing earlier at work. That’s not what I wanted to happen. I swear to God Matt I don’t sit around talking about your sex life with your mom. It really did just come up in passing and the context was really just about how we both just want you to be happy.”

Matt nurses his beer silently for a few moments. Foggy can almost hear the gears turning in his head. “Okay. But WHY were you talking about it? It really doesn’t have anything to do with you. With either of you,” he says evenly.

‘Time to take a bit of a risk,’ Foggy thinks. ‘This shouldn’t even be that weird, we use to talk all the time about the girls we hooked up with. Pretty sure we were constantly living vicariously through each other’s fun. Of course it’s a bit different being full on adults rather than school kids.’ “Have you been with anyone since…”

“Since when?” Matt asks, clarifying but not avoiding the question.

“Since the whole coming back from the dead thing,” Foggy blurts out quickly, still not comfortable with even mentioning it aloud.

“I did not come back from the dead, Foggy. You really need to stop saying it like that.”

“Funny, your mom hates when I call it that too,” Foggy admits.

“Because I didn’t die. And its … weird when you say it like that.”

“Okay fine. Let me re-phrase: have you slept with anyone since Midland Circle fell?” and Foggy feels like that sounds even more awkward, its taking a lot of events that happened over a fairly short period of time and slapping an overly simple label on it. But if Matt doesn’t want him to keep referring to it as rising from the dead he never will again.

Matt sighs, runs a hand absently through his hair. “No.”

“Is that on purpose?”

“Not really sure you can have sex by accident but yeah, okay, I guess so.”

“Is it cause of Electra?”

“Um, I don’t know … maybe?”

“Cause I know it almost killed you when you guys broke up that first time,” Foggy says. Matt doesn’t deny it, just nods and keeps quiet.

“But Matt, once you bounced back you were like … sleeping with so, SO many girls.”

Matt rubs at the back of his neck uncomfortably. He can’t hide the flush on his cheeks. But even as he ducks his head Foggy can’t tell if its embarrassment or smug pride he seeing. He can’t tell if Matt’s taking the comment as a dig or a compliment.

“Look, far be it for me to be anything other than sex positive but like why so many different people? Why didn’t you just pick one or two and stick with them?” He doesn’t need to add, ‘like I did,’ cause he’s sure that’s implied.

Matt stalls, drinks his beer, fidgets with his throw, buying time, obviously thinking how to best answer that. “So you know how I can read people’s responses, right. How I can sense their autonomic and involuntary responses?”

“Yeah,” Foggy says, remembering for not the first time how creepy and invasive he still finds that but aware now is not the time to voice those opinions.

“Well sex is really, really interesting with that stuff. I mean, I don’t exactly have a basis of comparison for sex without being able to sense all that of course.”

“Of course,” Foggy agrees. Its not like Matt had been having sex prior to his heightened senses developing since he was just a kid when that happened.

“So its really fun the first time to read someone and … figure them out, to discover what they want, what they need, to make it good for them.”

“Okay sure, first time is either awkward as shit or a new blast,” Foggy agrees.

“Yeah, well its not that interesting the second time around. Or sometimes its good enough for a few times but then it gets … I don’t know, boring?”

“You don’t like to sleep with the same person because its gets boring?” Foggy asks somewhat incredulously. “After one or two times?”

“Boring isn’t the right word. Maybe … just not challenging?”

“You’re complaining that sex is what, too easy?”

Matt shifts around in his seat and looks decidedly uncomfortable. Foggy takes pity on him and steers the conversation slightly differently. “Okay but you stayed with Electra. And I know you slept with her like a million times.”

“The exception to the rule?” Matt offers though he clearly knows that’s not an explanation. “It was different with her. She made everything so …”

“Hard,” Foggy asks, smiling at his double entendre.

“Yes.”

Foggy is really, really trying to understand but the further they get into this the more he thinks their sex lives and experiences are actually not comparable whatsoever. 

“So let me get this straight: you liked Electra because she was what, difficult?”

“No Foggy,” Matt says, his expression wistful. “I loved her because she was impossible.”

For a few minutes they just silently drink their beer.

…………………….

“What about Karen?”

“What ABOUT Karen?” Matt replies evenly.

Foggy just stares a Matt, says nothing.

Finally Matt says, “The one that got away,” with a dismissive sniff. He’s trying really hard to act like its no big deal but Foggy can feel the hurt bleeding from him five feet away. “I was so afraid of messing that up and, what do you know, I totally did.”

Matt has a bad habit of either not accepting blame when he should (and conversely taking on the guilt of things that are way out of his hands – the guy’s has yet to find a reasonable middle ground) so Foggy’s mildly impressed Matt is fessing up to his role in that relationship’s demise. 

“Looking back on it now do you understand why that relationship imploded?” Foggy asks, really hoping Matt has improved on his understanding of how relationships actually work given that he seems to be taking responsibility for his part in its destruction.

“Pretty sure Karen walking in on me having Electra in my bed killed any hope of us being together.”

“Electra wasn’t the problem, Matt. Or not most of it anyway. The problem was you kept lying to Karen,” Foggy explains patiently. Silently he adds, ‘And you kept lying to me too, dammit!’ but keeps that last part to himself.

“Yeah well, it doesn’t much matter now anyway, does it? End result is still the same. You know the worst part? I really did love Karen. Maybe, I guess I still do even. I mean, not that it matters.” He takes a swig of beer before continuing, “And not to cheapen it, but you know what makes it even worse? Somehow I can just tell I would never have gotten bored with her. I mean in bed AND otherwise. God, she’s amazing,” Matt says sadly, shaking his head.

‘Ouch,’ Foggy thinks and scrambles to change the direction of the conversation before Matt becomes even more depressed sounding. “Okay so answer me this: Electra notwithstanding, why did we always have the same taste in women? Like every girl you hooked up with was super hot but not just that, she’d was always my taste. How is it we had exactly the same taste in girls?”

“Ah, you’re probably not going to like this answer,” Matt warns him. 

“What?” he asks warily.

“So I can get a feel for a lot of things on a lady across the room. There’s a lot I can sense off her.”

“Okay.”

“But ultimately its pretty handy to get a second opinion.”

“You didn’t ask what I thought all the time when we went out to the bars and in classes and stuff.”

“I didn’t need to cause I could read you too.”

“Huh?”

“I read YOUR reactions. I kinda used you as my eyes.”

“You picked hot girls based on MY reactions to them?”

“Yeeeah, pretty much. So that’s probably why it seemed like we had the same taste. Uh, I hope that doesn’t make you mad, Foggy.”

“I have never been mad that you used me for my eyes, Matt,” Foggy says honestly. “It’s a little weird that you didn’t tell me you were reading me like that though.”

“Well, you didn’t know about my senses back then,” Matt points out.

“You couldn’t have just asked me, ‘Hey, is that girl over there hot?’”

“And I did … sometimes. Its just … um, its better to get a read off your involuntary responses. Its more … honest.”

“I’m trying really hard not to be creeped out by this,” Foggy admits.

“I’m sorry.”

“But you know what this means?”

“No?” Matt says hesitantly.

“I’m an even better wingman that I thought!” Foggy says with a smile, leaning forward to clink the neck of his bottle off Matt’s.

……………….

“I could put Tinder on your phone,” Foggy offers. “And I could tell you what the pictures look like, you know, which ones we find hot.”

“Yeah no. That’s not enough info for me to make a decision.”

“But-“

“Even with you looking at the pictures, Fogs. Thanks but no. I’ll pass. Let’s uh, swipe right on that idea, okay?”

“We could go bar hopping?”

“I don’t really even want to try to pick anyone up right now, Foggy.”

“Cause of Electra?” he asks quietly.

“Kinda. I mean nothing is ever going to be as good as that.”

“So you’re just not going to try? Matt there’s seven and a half billion people on earth.”

“Meaning?”

“So that’s 3.75 billion other women. Say we exclude anyone under 18 and over 65.” Matt nods, agrees with this specification. “Okay so that leaves like 3 billion ladies. Hell, if you expand your horizons a bit that’s 6 billion other people you could have sex with.” Matt doesn’t look thrilled but doesn’t argue it either. “Are you honestly saying you think out of 6 billion people you can’t find one that you like having sex with as much as Electra?”

“So now you want me to sleep with 6 billion people? Weren’t you saying earlier I shouldn’t have screwed my way through half of Columbia?”

Of course he starts bringing up stuff from their earlier argument now.

“I think you probably left a lot of girls wondering what happened,” Foggy says honestly. 

“Hey, I always, ALWAYS made sure they enjoyed it. I wasn’t taking advantage of anyone,” Matt says, starting to sound a bit defensive.

“That probably made it worse for them honestly.”

“Excuse me?”

“How do you think those girls took it when you had good sex together but you still didn’t want to see them again? That’s probably more confusing than if it wasn’t good, at least then they’d have a reason why you avoided them afterwards.”

“Oh,” Matt says. Maybe he never thought of it that way. Judging by the look on his face he probably didn’t. “I thought cause I always made them happy it was okay.”

‘That’s alarmingly simplistic logic,’ Foggy thinks. “Look, I’m not saying you took advantage of anybody, okay? Don’t go building up a case of guilt over this. I’m just saying that hooking up with a pile of girls but never staying around to make a relationship out of it isn’t really right for anybody involved.”

“Yeah but I didn’t WANT a relationship with any of them.”

“Don’t you see how that’s kind of a problem? You try that hard at sex and at least some of them are going to think you really care.”

“So you want me to have sex with 6 billion people but not unless I want to build a relationship with them?”

“Ugh, no. That’s not-“

“You can’t have it both ways – you can’t tell me I shouldn’t have had sex with that many people then turn around and tell me to sleep with half the planet.”

“Why DID you sleep with so many girls when we were in school? Especially after Electra. Just honestly, why?”

“Uh, cause I wanted to have sex with them?” Matt says as if the answer couldn’t be more obvious. “It doesn’t seem like I should have to explain this. Besides, you were having plenty of sex then too.”

“Yes, with the same half dozen girls. Repeatedly.”

“Look I already explained why I didn’t go back for repeats much. I know it might not make sense to you-“

“Did you really keep trying new people cause you got bored or were you looking for someone you liked as much as Electra?”

Matt sighs, scrubs a hand across his face. He turns his head and is clearly trying his best to stare down Foggy in the eyes. Its mostly successful given they’re at short range. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want to hear that you’re not giving up … on sex, on trying to find someone, on all of it.”

Matt gets up, turns his back on Foggy and faces the window. On anyone else the gesture would seem like they’re looking outside for something, anything, an escape maybe. When Matt does it its just a clear sign he’s putting distance between himself and everything else.

“Foggy I loved her. I loved her so much and she kept coming back to me. And I could have died happily in her arms that night.”

“You pretty much did,” Foggy softly points out and damn, it still hurts to hear this.

“Then why am I still here and how am I suppose to move on?” he asks, voice breaking, shoulders shaking.

Foggy has no good answers.


	4. Both Sides

The next day Foggy thoroughly and completely regrets bring up all that sex talk with Matt. He’s pretty sure he managed to make Matt feel worse about things and that was definitely not what he had intended. He’s tempted to call Matt, makes sure he’s not working himself into a spiral of depression and self loathing. He hates the thought that Matt may well be fixating in a circle of negative thoughts about himself and what he’s done in the past. The one and only good thing that came from all that was Foggy finally confirmed that no, despite his earlier suspicions Matt had not having sex just as a way to get comfort for himself. A small part of him was actually impressed Matt apparently always made sure his partner’s had a good time. It doesn’t excuse anything but he can’t help but agree somewhat with Matt’s justification that it wasn’t so bad to one and done all those girls if he made certain that one time was really, really good.

Ultimately he’d learned (not surprisingly) that Matt was most certainly not over Electra, and maybe he never had been. Sure, he’d crawled out of a mess of depression when she left before. But was it different now that she was really dead? And did Matt even want to get past it? In his head was he still buried under Midland Circle, wrapped in Electra’s arms for all eternity?

Foggy spent the whole weekend ruminating over all this, much to Marci’s consternation. He couldn’t explain it all to her and she certainly wouldn’t want to sit through listening to it. She’d left in a huff Sunday night saying he was brooding too loudly for her to think. Her irritation didn’t stop her from pausing to softly kiss the top of his head on her way out though.

And so, at eleven o’clock at night Foggy is still mulling things over and no closer to any answers whatsoever when he hears a tapping at his window. 

“Foggy!” Matt’s muffled voice calls out from the fire escape. “Let me in.”

Foggy quickly abandons his drink and opens the window. Matt is the sole reason they normally can’t use that window as it was just too much hassle to take the bug screen in and out. Marci had just rolled her eyes when Foggy tossed away the screen insert and then declared the window off limits in case any creepy crawlies decided to fly in. “Pretty sure creepy is definitely going to be crawling in,” Marci had remarked referring to Matt. Still, she hadn’t actually put up any further fuss over Foggy dedicating a window solely for his door allergic friend. 

Matt inelegantly falls into the apartment and onto the floor in a heap. Foggy is so surprised he doesn’t even have time to try to catch him.

“What happened? How bad is this?” he asks, hovering over where Matt is laying on the floor, arms wrapped around himself. He doesn’t know where to start in helping his friend up.

“Its not great,” Matt says from the floor, not even trying to get up. 

“I don’t see any blood,” Foggy notes hopefully. Not that it would have been easy to spot on Matt’s dark Daredevil clothes.

“No, no, its all internal,” Matt grinds out.

“Right, cause THAT sounds so much better. Jesus Christ, Matt! Why did you come here? Why would you think I could possibly help?” Foggy snaps, feeling decidedly useless given his complete and total lack of any medical training. He’s still hovering over Matt, now doubly afraid to touch him.

“I was in the neighbourhood,” Matt says, flashing a toothy smile up at Foggy. He has still made no efforts to pick himself up off the floor.

“Yeah, sure you were.”

“No really, I was only a half block from here when this uh, happened.”

“What did happen? And what in the hell do you think I can do to help?”

“I need to go see Maggie,” as though that explained everything.

“Then what are you doing HERE?” Foggy says, trying not to sound exasperated.

“I can’t walk to the church right now. I need help getting there,” Matt sounds less than thrilled about this. It was probably the asking for help that made him sound that way. “Can you get us a taxi?”  
Okay, there it is. Foggy knows Matt didn’t want to take a cab on his own on the off chance he passed out during the ride. He’d fessed up recently and told Foggy about his taxi ride from hell, about exactly how scared he’d been trapped in a car as it sank down into the water. It certainly sounded scary but Foggy wasn’t sure exactly why it so thoroughly unnerved Matt to even talk about it. The guy had been through stuff that was probably a lot scarier than that incident, especially given he apparently managed to escape relatively unscathed. But for whatever reason it continued to haunt Matt and Foggy didn’t have to understand it to respect that it was still an issue. And if Matt didn’t want to risk a repeat performance of it then he was more than happen to take a ride with him to the church and make damn sure he didn’t fall asleep on the way. This is decidedly easier to help with than the vast majority of Matt’s problems.

…………………….

“I don’t know what you think I’m going to be able to do about this,” Maggie says, pretty much echoing Foggy’s earlier statements.

“I don’t know … wrap them maybe?” Matt all but whines. 

For all that he hadn’t explained his predicament to Foggy, Matt had immediately on arrival informed Maggie he had both some cracked and several totally broken ribs. He had emphasized that the problem was on BOTH SIDES. When that got no reaction he’d pointed out that neither Foggy nor Maggie had suffered through enough broken ribs to understand how much of a problem this was. He was plenty experienced with similar injuries but explained how it was going to be exceedingly problematic not being able to move and shift around to one side to compensate. He’d never managed to sustain injuries to both sides at the same time before but was anticipating this would be a huge issue.

“You know that’s not a good idea,” Maggie says. “Particularly given that bout of pneumonia earlier this year.” She’s feeling a bone slightly shifting under her hand. Nothing feels like it was about to stab through any internal organs when she presses but it wasn’t exactly like she could x ray him either. Something shifts under her fingers and Matt yelps. “Sorry. Does this need to be moved?”

“Yeah, push it up and to the left a little bit,” Matt says, voice tight. He gives a full body jerk when she presses. “MY left!”

Foggy tries very hard not to throw up the chicken burger he’d had for dinner. He thinks he can actually see the bone move around under Maggie’s hand.

“Yeah, YEAH THERE!” Matt gasps. “Don’t, don’t touch it anymore.”

Maggie snatches her hand away. “What am I going to do with you?” she asks in her standard fondly frustrated tone.

“I don’t care as long as you don’t touch that part again,” Matt grumbles. He looks like he wants to curl up and die but he is definitely stuck keeping his chest straight, flat on his back on the bed.

“Foggy, come help me make tea,” Maggie says. “Somebody needs a few minutes to himself.”

Foggy trails silently after her upstairs figuring she’s probably right. It seemed like Matt was just barely keeping himself from snapping on either of them, the pain certainly not making him any less tense than usual. Its marginally easier to see Matt expressing pain rather than how he use to try to hide it and be so stoic but its still unpleasant for everyone involved.

……………………..

“Did he tell you what happened?” Maggie asks as she puts the kettle on.

“No, he just showed up like that.”

“I see,” she says, not sounding happy about it. And definitely not surprised either. “Well there’s not really much I can do for him. Its not like when he needs stiches and I can fix something. I don’t even know why he came.”  
“Did you think he might just have been hurting and wanted to see you? Wanted us around?” Foggy suggests.

“But why would…” Maggie looks truly puzzled as she trails off, thinking. “Huh,” she finally says, busying herself with the tea.

‘These two,’ Foggy says to himself silently in his head.

………………..

By the time they make it back to the basement Matt is asleep. 

“We should get those ropes off,” Maggie says, looking down at the intricately woven cords wrapped around his hands and arms. They had probably started out white but are now stained red and brown. None of Matt’s fingers looked discoloured but Foggy can’t help but assume this isn’t doing any favours for his circulation. They pull up chairs on either side of the bed and began the long process of unwinding the ropes. Matt doesn’t so much as twitch.

At first Foggy is impressed at the level of intricacy and preciseness with which the ropes are wound around Matt’s arms. But within a few minutes he is quietly cursing under his breath at how complicated removing them is. This was taking forever. There had to be a better solution than ropes. Why couldn’t Matt just use protective, padded gloves like he use to?

“This is really stupid,” he finally says aloud. He isn’t sure if he is saying it to Maggie or Matt but waits for either to react to his statement as he untangles the end from where he’s twisted it up again. Peering over to see how Maggie is dealing with this, Foggy doesn’t miss her amused expression as she methodically unwinds her rope. He’s not surprised to see she’s considerably farther along than he is in removing it. Her end is also free from tangles, coiled neatly on the bed. ‘Nun magic,’ Foggy thinks, glaring at his hopelessly tangled mess. “How is this not walking you up?” he asks Matt, repositioning the limp arm for the millionth time.

There is no response and Foggy starts to get slightly unnerved.

“You don’t think he hit his head or something, do you?” 

“He didn’t say he did,” Maggie says, not sounding like she feels any of the concern that’s creeping up on Foggy.

“Yeah but shouldn’t this be waking him up?” He looks at Matt and there’s something decidedly limp noodle about him. And the only time Foggy can think of that Matt is this level of unaware, this committed to staying asleep, is when he’s drunk. And Foggy had been with him so he knows for sure Matt is not drunk.

“Did you give him something?” he asks Maggie, not even trying to avoid sounding suspicious.

“You saw me giving him pills when you got here,” Maggie says, looking at Foggy like he’s said something incredibly stupid.

“So that wasn’t aspirin?” Foggy says, figuring it out.

“Ah no,” Maggie confirms.

“You know how he feels about taking stuff. Matt wouldn’t agree to taking narcotics. Did he know what you were giving him?” Foggy asks, trying not to get upset. 

“I’m sure he did.”

“But did you even ask him if he was okay with that?”

“No. He’s had them plenty of times before.”

“Really?” he asks, not believing her for a second.

Maggie sighs, she sets Matt’s still partially rope encased hand gently on the bed. She looks Foggy straight in the eye. “Before, when Matt came to us he was very badly injured. And he did nothing but fight us for three days. He was making his injuries worse. He kept moving and was in so much pain he couldn’t even begin to heal. Yes, I know his objections to drugs and medications. And yes, I forced things on him without his permission.”  
Foggy feels his blood boiling but stays silent, forcing himself to hear her out.

“And you know what? Once Matthew had a clue what was going on, and I was able to get through to him that all his moving and suffering was making his situation a lot worse he didn’t hesitate to take whatever I gave him. He might have been frustratingly obstinate before but he’s quite a bit more reasonable about such things now.”

It actually makes some sense. Foggy hadn’t known why Matt had stopped kicking up a fuss about taking cold pills when he got sick, or the antibiotics afterwards when his lungs had become infected. At the time he’d just been thankful to not have to fight him to do something for his own good. Really he doesn’t have any objections to Matt taking meds when he needs them, just the thought of him getting dosed without his consent had bothered him immensely.

“Stop worrying. He burns through them fast. Four hours and he’ll be back to normal, probably be whining about the mess he’s made of his ribs.”

Foggy goes back to dealing with his tangled rope, much less worried but not entirely pleased with Maggie.

………………….

Maggie was totally right. Four hours after their arrival Matt gasps himself awake. Unfortunately he’s forgotten he’d injured his ribs and between trying to move and breathe he ends up a twitching, choking mess, writhing on the bed in pain, arms wrapped around himself. 

“Matt! Calm down, you’re making it worse,” Foggy says, trying to sound calm and reasonable when all he feels is horror at Matt’s pained movements and sounds. “Breathe!”

“I can’t! I can’t breathe!” Matt cries.

“If you can get air in to say that then you most definitely CAN breathe,” Maggie points out very matter of factly.

After what seems like a long time but in reality is more like a minute, Matt manages to reign in his desperate swallows for air. Taking much smaller, half breaths his body starts to relax, he stops writhing around, ceases clawing desperately at his own chest.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Foggy reassures him, holding Matt’s hand.

“Yeah, I uh, sorry,” Matt says, voice now steady. “That’s not a fun way to wake up.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Foggy agrees, pulling his chair closer to the side of Matt’s bed. “Do you need anything?” he asks. Matt shakes his head no. Maggie has wandered away, fussing with something across the room, effectively pretending she’s disinterested now that Matt’s awake. Probably wasn’t fooling any of them but Foggy isn’t about to call her out on it. “So can I talk to you about something?”

“Yeah,” Matt said warily.

“The arraignment for the Pennerman case.”

“Oh,” Matt sounds all kinds of relieved once he hears the subject matter. “Yeah no, everything is set. Its not til Monday. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Its in four hours.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. So I’m gonna need you to talk me through this cause I know we’d decided you’d take point but…” Foggy motions toward Matt who is still flat on his back in the bed.

“No, its fine. I can do it. That’s plenty of time to get home and dressed.”

“You’re gonna show up? Like this?”

“If you think about it its actually less weird than when I show up looking a mess,” Matt says, vaguely motioning at his frequently bruised and busted up face. “Nobody will even be able to see there’s a problem.”  
“I’m pretty sure they’re going to be able to tell,” Foggy has exactly no faith Matt can move around well enough to convince anybody at court he isn’t injured, especially given the way last night he’d explained how much of a problem this was going to be.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll think up an excuse. Worst case scenario I’ll play it up for sympathy,” Matt says, totally dismissively. “Help me get up?”

It’s awkward and painful but somehow Foggy finally ends up bodily wedged behind Matt, getting him at least into a sitting position.

“You ever see those turtles when one goes and flips his buddy over when he sees the other is stuck? That’s you right now, Matt. A flipped over turtle.”

Matt huffs a quick laugh and swallows it down just as fast because that must feel like crap when his ribs shift.

“Will you please wrap my ribs?” he asks Maggie pleadingly. “I just need to make it through court and I promise then I’ll take it off.”

“Fine,” Maggie agrees, obviously not pleased.

…………………..

Matt does indeed make it to court as planned. He needs an embarrassing amount of help from Foggy to get into his suit and doesn’t even attempt to deal with his hair cause he has no desire to lift his arms up. Foggy thinks he does a passible job making Matt presentable. 

Foggy’s never thought about how many times its necessary to stand up at court. Matt takes so long to rise each time everyone’s already being seated while he’s still on the ascent. Each time he goes just a shade more pale. As usual Matt seems to think he’s doing a great job of hiding his injuries. He seems surprised when the judge stops and calls him out on it, asking if he’s able to continue. Matt does his handsome, wounded duck thing, quickly spins some yarn about hurting his back, and something about a cat. Foggy tunes him out cause he’s honestly heard enough of Matt’s bullshit excuses for being hurt to last a lifetime. At least he’s no longer the one Matt’s trying to convince everything is just fine. 

………………………

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Matt starts while Foggy is cutting the tape off his chest in his kitchen later that day. Foggy knows that tone immediately. Its been awhile but it always precedes the same comment: a warning about it being stupid. “Its stupid though.”

“Good.”

“Really?”

“Yes, your stupid questions are never actually stupid and they’re one of the few times I can usually provide you with an answer.”

“Now that’s just not true. You have amazing answers and solutions all the time,” Matt says sincerely, wide, a sweet, honest smile on his face.

“Okay yes,” Foggy says, not ready for any sentimentality while he’s carefully sliding a sharp pair of scissors along Matt’s side. “Ask away.”

“How does a turtle flip another turtle over?”

That was not what Foggy was expecting. Matt knows a million things but there are always these gaps, spots in his knowledge where his blindness truly hampers him. He’s really careful not to let these show, and Foggy knows Matt bullshits well enough to cover himself pretty much all the time. But there have always been some things he can’t figure out on his own, special senses or not. Matt had been so embarrassed to ask things like this when they’d first met but the more Foggy answered him, didn’t make fun and helped Matt figure things out the more questions he’d asked. Foggy was pretty sure Matt had been building up a shit ton of questions he felt he had nobody to ask while he was growing up. Or maybe he’d just never worked up the nerve before. Probably wasn’t easy to admit to not knowing things everyone around him easily had visual knowledge of.

“You know what a turtle looks like, right?”

“…yeah.”

“Like you KNOW or you just have some vague idea of its shape?”

“The second one,” Matt admits, sounding distinctly embarrassed. Really, there’s a good chance he’d never seen a turtle in real life as a kid, probably only knew them from cartoons.

‘Man, somebody really failed hard and it wasn’t you, Matt,’ Foggy thinks not for the first time. He glances around the apartment but of course there nothing even vaguely turtle shaped. It there was they’d probably not be having this conversation. 

“Take these,” he says, passing the shears to Matt. He’s cut the bindings far enough down that Matt should be able to get the rest off without straining too hard.

Foggy looks around the kitchen and quickly gathers up what he needs. He ends up with two bowls on a dish cloth, one upside down, the other right side up. He shoves some carrot sticks under the edge of the upside down bowl to represent legs, then adds celery to make a head and tail. Matt has stopped looking embarrassed and is now focused on Foggy’s bowl turtles.

“Okay, so this is one turtle,” Foggy says, pointing it out. He knows Matt can tell what’s in front of himself more or less but he’s not too sure how the orientation of the objects comes across. Matt’s better with larger things in general, he’s discovered this by trial and error. “The bowl is like his shell. Feel his legs and his tail.”

Matt’s hand easily knows where the vegetables are against the edge of the bowl. Finding the parts isn’t the problem. 

“But how are they attached? Do they just stick out the sides?”

“No, not on a real turtle. They’re kind of underneath but out the sides too. It depends if they’re sticking out or he’s pulling them into his shell. But they’re not right underneath like say a dog or a cat.”

“So the turtle can pull them underneath because its hollow under there?” Matt asks, running one finger under the lip of the bowl.

Foggy thinks his model really sucks and he’s probably doing nothing but confusing Matt even more.

“They’re not hollow underneath like the bowl is. I think they’re flat on the bottom?”

“Then where do their legs go?”

Foggy sighs feeling like he’s doing an absolute shit job of trying to explain a turtle with dinner bowls and vegetables. Unfortunately, Matt misinterprets Foggy’s sigh as irritation for not getting it.  
“Its okay, never mind. It doesn’t matter, I don’t even know why I brought this up,” he says quickly.

“No! It DOES matter, Matt,” Foggy says. “You’ve got as much right as anybody else to know how a turtle works. I’m just frustrated I can’t explain this better.”

“Its not like you went to school for zoology, Foggy,” Matt points out.

‘And I sure as shit didn’t go to school to learn how to explain stuff to someone who has next to no visual reference,’ Foggy thinks. “Forget the legs for now. You wanted to know how one can flip the other over, right?”

“Yeah. Does he like, grab him with his paws?”

‘Fuck. If you could see a turtle for like two seconds you’d get this,’ he thinks. “They have the kind of feet that don’t grab things. Think less cat paws and more like our feet.”

“Ah, okay.”

‘Good. At least that part makes sense to him,’ Foggy thinks. 

“So they kind of use their shells to tip the other one over. Like they wedge the edge of it underneath and then stand up to flip their friend right side up.”

He tries to approximate this with the bowls. They’re smooth and gently curved so its less than helpful.

“I’m sorry Matt. I’ll figure a better way to show you this so it makes sense.”

“Foggy,” he waits to continue ‘til Foggy looks away from the bad model and looks at him instead. “Nobody else would have even tried.”

“Yeah, Matt, I know,” Foggy says feeling nothing but disappointment at the world.

“Thank you.”


	5. Flipping Turtles

“Eww, what IS that?” Matt asks.

“This is a $12 coffee. But I’m pretty sure there’s not much in the way of actual coffee in it. Its all syrups and flavour shots and stuff.”

“And you’re going to drink that?” he asks, disgust clearly in his tone.

“Hell no, this is bribery coffee. Come on, the place is just up ahead.”

Foggy leads the way ‘til they reach their destination.

“It’s a pet shop?” Matt asks before they head in.

“Yes, and this is going to blow your mind,” he says, getting the door.

Foggy greets the store worker he’d met with yesterday. He hands over her ridiculous coffee, pleased to see her face light up. She takes them towards the back of the shop, past colourful birds in cages and tanks with mice running in their wheels, to a quiet corner. On the table is a glass tank. There’s two stools against it that are thankfully tall enough that Matt will actually be able to sit on one without the agony of levering himself up afterwards. Changing positions is still torturous. He seems most comfortable standing straight up but its not realistic to maintain that position all the time.

“So come check out these turtles,” Foggy says excitedly.

Matt leans closer, it would appear like he’s trying to get a better look to a casual observer.

“Those are tortoises,” Matt informs him.

“How?”

“Turtles live in water. Tortoises live in … whatever that stuff is. Dry land anyway.”

Of course the academic and technical knowledge is there. This is exactly how Matt fools everyone. He’ll know everything around a subject but be missing key details – a deficit a casual observer might not notice.  
“Okay yes, they’re tortoises. But pretty much the same thing. And come to think of it those videos of them flipping their buddies were not in water so maybe this is what I meant in the first place anyway.   
Krissy said we can hold them as long as we’re careful not to drop them.”

Matt looks unsure. “Do they bite?”

“You have a chest full of bruised and broken ribs and you’re afraid of getting bit by a tiny turtle?”

“Not afraid,” Matt grumbles. “And they’re tortoises.” He reaches in the tank and carefully scoops up one of the little animals. The tortoise doesn’t seem to care, just tries to walk off Matt’s hand. He sets it down gently on the table top then reaches into the tank for some of the food it had been eating. The little tortoise goes back to happily munching, uncaring as Matt starts examining it. He starts by gently running a single finger along the back of it shell. Foggy almost tells him there’s probably no need to be that gentle with the animal, doesn’t think it can feel anything on the top of its shell, but he doesn’t want to interrupt. Slowly and delicately Matt feels around the animal paying particular attention to where its legs meet its body/shell. Maybe it tickles or something because the tortoise jerks his leg back, tucking the limb in protectively.

“You didn’t hurt it, that’s what they normally do.”

“Yeah, I know,” Matt says, fingers following the leg in, feeling how its been drawn up tightly.

“Did you ever have a pet, Matt?” Foggy asks, pretty sure of the answer.

“No, never.”

Matt had never shown any real inclination towards animals that Foggy can remember but between his previous short term obsession with the pizza rat and this sudden interest in turtles it seemed like something worth asking about.

“Do you want one?”

“No,” he said without any hesitation. “I don’t want anything with a heartbeat in my apartment.”

Okay well, that was pretty clear. So maybe he’d be willing to share his space with a houseplant some day?

Watching Matt being as soft and delicate in his touches as he can, Foggy realized maybe now was a good time to bring up Brett’s phone call. There’s also the advantage that Matt is very unlikely to throw a shit fit in the middle of a public store.

“So Brett called me last week,” he starts aiming for nonchalant.

“Uh huh.”

“I think he’s figured out who you are.”

Matt stiffens, pulls his hand away from the little tortoise. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Naturally, he didn’t expect Matt to be pleased by this development. 

“I don’t think so. He was talking like Daredevil is our client. I think that’s how he wants to play this. I guess there’s a chance its what he thinks but I doubt it.”

“Okay,” Matt says, going back to slowly running one fingertip along the edges of the tortoise’s shell.

“So he wanted me to get a message to our so-called client.”

“That being?”

“He wants you to tone it down a bit.”

“Tone it down?” Matt asks, his tone is cold, not so much questioning as inviting Foggy to continue speaking and say the wrong thing.

“He wants you to do less damage. I think his exact words were its easier to question a suspect when they’re missing a few teeth rather than trying to speak through a broken jaw. He thinks the police are going to be a lot less sympathetic towards Daredevil if perps keep getting really seriously injured.”

“I don’t think they’re sympathetic to what I do as it is,” he points out.

“Brett would disagree. And you have to admit the police could definitely make your job a whole lot worse if they were actively trying to catch you or stop you.”

“They get what they deserve, Foggy,” Matt says darkly. “I’m not hitting innocent people out there. It’s not necessarily getting worse, its just that now they know its always been me.”

“Okay yeah, they probably do deserve an ass kicking. I’m definitely not remarking on WHO you go after. But do they deserve injuries so severe they end up with lifelong problems from it?”

“I don’t decide how their injuries affect them,” Matt says rather dismissively.

“No, but you do decide how severe they are. Brett says they’re getting worse. Do I need to be worried about you? About how you’re handling things?”

“I don’t know, do you?” Matt snarks like he’s intentionally trying to piss Foggy off.

Foggy thinks back to when he asked Maggie why she was so harsh with Matt. She’d looked him square in the eye and said, “Because that’s what he responds to.” At the time he’d been horrified by her answer. It wasn’t that she was wrong, there just seemed like a lot better ways to approach Matt, especially given what a shit show most of his life had been, how he’d been treated over the years.

“You need to do what Brett said. You need to dial it back. When they hit the ground you NEED to STOP HITTING. What’s happening lately, that can’t continue … for everyone’s sake,” Foggy says as firmly and clearly as he can manage.

Matt says nothing. He scoops up the little tortoise and gently places it back into the tank with its buddy.

“Can you handle that?” Foggy asks, stealing Maggie’s ability to make a question sound very much like a command. He’s seen how Matt often bristles at being ordered around by other people but hopes he’s the exception, that the message coming from his best friend is more positively received.

“Yes.”

“And are you GOING to do that?” Foggy asks, tone softening without his permission.

Matt sits there silently, face unreadable. Finally he says, “Yes. I will do that. I’m not saying nobody’s getting hurt.”

“I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to do your job,” Foggy says despite that fact that he had, in fact, just done exactly that.

“I’ll be more careful, I’ll stop sooner.”

“Good!” Foggy says brightly, trying to break some of the intense tension that has been brewing around them. He reaches into the tank. “Now let’s flip one over and see what happens.”

The tortoises obediently spend the rest of the afternoon taking turns righting each other after being flipped over. Matt fully understands what Foggy meant before when he’d joked about Matt being stuck like a turtle on its back needing a friend to help him out. And Foggy’s pretty sure Matt now understands some other things as well.


	6. Mistakes were made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen has good intentions but unfortunately she shares Matt's tendency to sometimes make poor, impulsive decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH, the chapter that took me SIX WEEKS to screw up the nerve to write. While I don't feel its necessary to slap a non-con warning on the entire fic, there certainly some issues around consent going on here. Its not horrible - nobody gets hurt or anything I promise. There should be nothing traumatizing in here. But yeah, the issue does come up. And come to think of it doesn't actually get explained well until almost the end of next fic Working Vacation.

“I’m really sorry, Matt. I swear this won’t take more than an hour,” Foggy says despite the fact that Matt’s asleep. He really doesn’t want to leave but their (well paying) client needs bailing out. Again. “I should be back in a couple hours tops. Karen is coming by, she’s going to keep watch. This will be fine,” Foggy says, mostly to convince himself given that Matt’s not awake and thus not listening. 

After Matt had apparently refused to sleep for three nights in a row they’d finally had to confront him at the office. He had very grudgingly explained he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of sleeping in bed because he had such hard time getting up. So rather than do the sane thing like find a way to sleep around the problem, like say, propped on his fairly comfortable couch, Matt had gone nuclear and decided to just wait it out and sleep once his ribs weren’t causing him so much grief. 

“How have you not managed to kill yourself by now?” Foggy had asked, only half joking. “You can’t honestly think you can just stay awake for weeks on end?”

“No,” Matt said tentatively. “Look, I just didn’t feel safe, and its not a big deal.”

“You know what’s not safe?” Foggy had started into yelling again despite telling himself not to. “Staying up for days on end and trying to keep functioning! Thank God you don’t drive cause I’m pretty sure you’d have kept doing that too!” Why concern comes out half the time as anger he’s not sure. Foggy is willing to accept its just a personality flaw he has. And Matt really, really exacerbates it.

Matt had just shook his head, not even trying to defend himself at this point.

“You are going home now. And you are most definitely going to bed. I will stand there and stare at you in bed ‘til you sleep.”

“That’s not exactly going to help me sleep you know,” Matt said, sounding half amused.

And that amused tone just sets off Foggy even worse. “And who else is volunteering to stand around and watch over you while you sleep, huh Matt?”

Matt apparently realizes he’s made a misstep here but Foggy’s 99% sure Matt doesn’t even get where he went wrong. “Okay, I’m sorry, you’re right. It actually would be really nice to get a full night’s sleep with my fellow turtle flipper at my disposal. But I’m fine to finish out the rest of today-“

“You fell asleep standing up getting coffee, Matt!”

“But see at least I knew I NEEDED that coffee,” Matt says, again trying to make it a joke and entirely missing Foggy’s now thoroughly boiling emotions.

He doesn’t even hesitate, just grabs Matt by the collar of his suit jacket, the clothing equivalent of the scruff of the neck, and starts bodily hauling him to the exit.

“Karen!” he barks out. “Really sorry, need to get Matt home now. Can you take all the calls?” He’s literally dragging his partner out the door. Matt seems so surprised by this abrupt manhandling he’s not even trying to resist. Or, that’s how Foggy justifies his compliance to himself cause he can’t even consider the thought that he’s hurting Matt enough to get him to cooperate. Could Matt get away if he really tried? Absolutely. Is he going to attempt that? Probably not if its finally gotten through his thick skull exactly how determined Foggy is at the moment.

“Got it under control,” Karen reassures them, watching Foggy force Matt out the door without so much as letting him get his bag and over coat. “Call if you need me.”

“What did we do to deserve her?” Foggy asks as they pass the office threshold.

“Not nearly enough,” Matt concedes, still being propelled forward by Foggy.

……………………………

“For fuck’s sake’s Matt! You’re half asleep standing up. Why is this such a problem? Lay down and get some rest already!” He’d gotten Matt to the point he was changed into pajamas but he was still stubbornly refusing to get into bed. The man was literally swaying on his feet but it didn’t seem to stop him from digging in his heels at the last second and pouting like a toddler.

“I’ll just crash on the couch. Its fine,” Matt says, starting to head towards the living room.

Foggy easily blocks the doorway. “No. You need to get proper sleep in a real bed. You’ve never slept more than four hours in a row on that sofa. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Matt snorts but doesn’t argue. It looks like he’s quickly running out of both excuses and energy as he slowly lowers himself to sit on the side of the bed.

“I don’t get what your problem is but Matt, I’m gonna stay here and make sure you’re fine, okay? If there’s a fire alarm or whatever I will help you haul your broken ass out of bed, okay? Besides, if there was an honest to God emergency, like life or death, you telling me you couldn’t figure some way to I don’t know, roll yourself out of bed or something?”

Matt looks miserable but admits, “Okay yes, if there was a life and death emergency I could get up. It would definitely take awhile, would be stupidly awkward and hurt like hell but yeah, I could.”

“Good. But don’t worry cause nothing is going to happen and I’m literally going to be in the next room. Just please do us both a favour and sleep?”

Foggy had succeeded finally in getting Matt to lay down and it had taken all of about 10 seconds for him to fall asleep. And Foggy had been able to enjoy his little triumph for all of 10 minutes before getting the call from Karen about their client needing immediate assistance. She’d easily agreed to come by Matt’s place and cover for Foggy. He really hated to leave but knew Matt would just tell him to go (and quite likely insist on coming along with) were he to wake him and explain what was going on. Didn’t make Foggy any more happy about the situation though.

He opens the door to Karen at the first knock.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” he says, quickly gathering up his stuff, ready to dash out. “I don’t expect this to take too long.”

“Of course,” Karen says. “I don’t mind.”

“Don’t wake him up. Just … I don’t know, make sure he stays in bed. I mean he probably can’t really get up himself anyway from what he says. Just…” he can’t figure how to articulate that he needs Karen there more to save Matt from himself than to actually protect him from outside threats. But honestly? Both Daredevil and Matt have managed to really cheese off a number of people over the years and Matt has admitted problems have managed to break their way into his place at the most inopportune times previously so who knows?

“Foggy, relax. I can handle this. Go do what you need to do,” Karen says, putting a steady and reassuring hand on his arm.

“Thanks Karen,” he says and hurries out the door. The faster he can deal with this the faster he can get back.

…………..

Karen slips off her shoes and makes her way to Matt’s bedroom as quietly as she can. She knows Foggy will be pissed off if she wakes Matt but she feels the need to check if he’s really sleeping anyway.

“Matt?” she says at normal volume from the doorway. She knows Matt can usually sense when he’s being stared at. She read somewhere that (normal) humans can sense being stared at even when they’re asleep so she’d almost expect him to feel her gaze from the doorway now. But there’s not even a twitch, he’s totally dead to the world. Three days without sleep would definitely account for that. Its rare she can indulge in just taking him in unnoticed. ‘Damn is he handsome,’ she thinks for the millionth time. That they broke up before they even really got started still hurts despite the fact that it was she who made it very clear when things were over.  
Foggy has repeatedly and delightedly told her how much better Matt’s been about telling the truth and cutting out all the bullshit, lies and excuses. Or trying to as best he can at any rate. It’s a tall order for someone so set in his ways of lying and omitting the truth on a near constant basis. And while she’s really happy that Foggy is seeing a noticeable change, Karen is still not so sure this propensity for truth extends to her as well. She wouldn’t say Matt’s exactly been closed off to her but there’s definitely been an undercurrent of polite professionalism in their interactions of late. He may not be openly lying to her but he’s certainly distancing himself in a way that’s not easy to define. 

Karen has no doubts that Matt was very attracted to her before. She could feel how he was drawn to her, terrified to misstep and holding back even when she knew some part of him desperately wanted to surge forward. But a hell of a lot has happened between those first few tender moments and the present and she’s very much aware there may not be any way back, she’s not even sure if he would want that. She’s not sure if she would either.  
Before she has the chance to overthink it Karen finds herself laying in Matt’s bed beside him. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him so she decides to indulge her curiosity just a bit. And really, he looks like he could use the comfort of someone with him right about now. She carefully lays against his side, puts her head on his shoulder. She fits perfects against him, his height and build a puzzle piece match to her own body just like she’d expected. And it feels exactly right.

Maybe it’s a little overstep but she reasons he’d want this too as she gently plays with his hair, softly strokes his arm, his chest. Surely some part of his brain will register she’s being nice to him, making him feel better, right? And whoa, yeah, she notices that its not Matt’s brain that’s clued in to her presence. Those grey sweatpants are not hiding much and there’s totally a reaction to her soft touches. Interesting.  
Clearly he’s on board with this so Karen decides despite the fact that Foggy will be pissed off she’s woken Matt up, she might as well keep making him feel better. On some level she’s aware this is more than a little forward but hey, this is where they were headed before and he’s obviously enjoying it. She just needs to give him a nice wake up. She gently runs her hand along the side of his face, calls his name softly and slides her leg to nestle comfortably between his own, gently nudging against him.

And quite suddenly Karen becomes aware that she has completely and totally misjudged this situation.

Matt’s eyes snap open and his expression is not at all one of comfort or lust or excitement like she had expected. Its blind panic. Before she can stop him Matt’s scrambling away, untangling himself as best he can. But he’s not making all that much progress for all the apparent effort, hampered and half trapped by busted ribs. And its gotta hurt cause he’s hyperventilating and wrapping his arms around himself in some effort to keep his chest from moving despite the fast breaths. Karen’s horrified to see tears rolling down Matt’s cheeks as he tries to get more distance between them though she has no idea if that’s from pain or fear at this point. 

“Matt! Matt! Its okay! Its just me. Karen. You’re fine,” she frantically tries to reassure him.

“Karen?” Matt says, sounding totally confused but still hyperventilating, whole body now shaking as he stops actively trying to get away. 

Something inside Karen dies just a little when he moans and clutches at his sides harder, obviously hurting. This is so far from what she was trying to do for him, in fact its pretty much the exact opposite.  
“I’m sorry, I thought you wanted it, I thought I was helping,” she blurts out and makes a second mistake of trying to reach out to touch and soothe her distressed friend.

Matt cringes away, keeps gasping for a moment then apparently his exhausted brain sorts out what was happening, what’s going on with his body, with ALL of his body. As the situation downstairs abates quickly on account of the fear and panic, his brain revs up and switches rapidly from terrified to super, super angry.

“What the FUCK KAREN!?!” he shouts. 

Karen has never once heard Matt drop an F bomb. And she’s also most definitely never been the target of his rage. She hurries off the bed, putting as much distance between them as she quickly can.  
“What the fuck was THAT about? You think you can just come in here and do what you want? Like I’m some fucking play thing?” Matt barks. The shaking has not stopped, if anything its getting worse. She sees his fingers, white and bloodless with force, clawing at his sides as he tries to hold himself together and lessen the pain.

“Get out,” he finishes, icy and now quiet yet somehow far more threatening and dangerous. 

Karen flees from the bedroom, hurriedly pulls on her shoes and yanks open the front door only to find Foggy on the other side, key poised for the lock that’s been torn from his hands.

“Oh my God, Karen, what’s the matter?” Foggy says taking in her tear streaked face. “Is Matt okay? Did he freak out on you? I know he can be crabby when he’s this tired – I told you not to wake him up.”

Karen goes from mild tears to full on bawling as she pushes past Foggy and runs for the stairs. Foggy is horribly torn for a moment because his first impulse is to chase after Karen but he needs to know if Matt’s okay. He tells himself Karen is too upset to talk about whatever happened right now and he will ring her cell in a little bit once she’s had time to settle and get whatever distance she needs.

“Matt!” he hollers as he makes his way inside and towards the bedroom. “What the hell happened? I’ve only been gone 45 minutes and Karen’s a crying mess! What on earth did you say to her?”

“Not talking about this Foggy,” Matt says. He’s seated on the side of the bed, facing away, one arm wound tightly around himself, the other putting on his glasses. Foggy does not miss the fact that Matt’s tightly vibrating in place. There’s some really scary vibes coming off him and Foggy wants to back the hell up and out of the room. But he wants answers just slightly more. “No way, you can’t just expect me to walk in on whatever the hell was going on between you two and expect me to not ask what’s happening.”

“I said I’m not talking about this,” Matt growls, tone clearly indicating he has zero intensions of discussing the matter further.

“I deserve some answers!” Foggy says, trying not to lose his cool. There are just way too many emotions flying around the apartment at the moment and its hard to not let the situation crank him up too.

“I don’t have any,” Matt says, hunching further in on himself.

“FINE! You don’t want to explain what just went down? FINE!” Foggy snaps. “I’ll tell you one thing though – you are fixing this. I am NOT working in a office with you two at odds. Fix your shit Matt!”

……………

Monday morning Matt is about 20 minutes late but does not arrive empty handed. He enters the office with an absolutely gorgeous and rather large bouquet of flowers and his best apologetic expression. Foggy quietly shuts his office door to show them he’s giving them privacy but he definitely peeks out the window a few times, tells himself he’s just making sure things are going smoothly. He half wishes he could borrow Matt’s super hearing and eavesdrop but given that neither of them wanted to talk about whatever went down on Friday at Matt’s apartment he’s pretty acutely aware he’s not invited into this conversation. Matt’s pulled up a chair beside Karen at her desk, he’s holding her hand in his and whatever he’s saying must be acceptable to Karen because she nods repeatedly and continues to look increasingly more comfortable as they talk. It’s not long but they end up leaning together in a seated hug and Foggy lets go of the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Knowing that his two best friends were in conflict gave him the same antsy feeling as when his parents argued and he’s felt equally useless at fixing this problem as he did when he was a kid and his family was at odds with one another. 

It looked like all was well at the offices of Nelson, Murdock and Page until Matt heads out the front door. Foggy yanks open his office door to ask Karen what happened but she cuts him off before he can get a word out.  
“Its fine, Foggy. We’re all good. Matt just said he needed a couple minutes to go grab coffee and donuts for us. He said he couldn’t manage them and the flowers on his way in this morning.”  
“Okay. Uh that’s good,” Foggy says, relieved, plopping down at his desk, willing his nerves to stop over reacting. “I’m glad he apologized to you.”

“Yeah, the flowers are super gorgeous but well, it WAS kinda MY fault,” Karen says looking a little uncomfortable. Apparently now that the issue is resolved Foggy is allowed to hear at least some of what went down. It seriously irks him that he’s been kept in the dark so far so he absolutely does not stop her from continuing, just nods and motions towards the seat across from his desk. He can literally feel himself slip from friend to professional listener. Its involuntary but damned useful. Karen takes the seat but immediately starts squirming despite Foggy’s best efforts to appear chill and non judgemental. 

“So I got absolutely nowhere with Matt when I tried to get answers about what happened between you two. I would really like it if you could tell me about what happened, Karen,” Foggy says, professional voice in full effect. Waiting a couple days to talk was definitely the right move. Karen is not tearful anymore and if he had to pin down her expression its more along the lines of contrite.

“Yeah so, um, when I was with Matt I might have kinda overstepped my bounds.” 

When it appears she’s not going to go into details Foggy asks, “Can you elaborate on that?” His tone is even, he’s absolutely not going to get emotional here even if he does not think he likes where this is going one bit. Matt may be pretty much unable to keep his shit together half the time lately but Foggy is clamping down hard on his emotions and ramping up on his professionalism. 

“Uhhh, I might have crawled into bed with him. I was trying to make him feel better, that’s all Foggy, I swear!” Karen says sounding distinctively uncomfortable. The intensions may have been good at the time but now there’s nothing but guilt written all over her face.

Foggy just looks at her silently, metaphorically giving her enough rope to hang herself.

“He was enjoying it I swear! I thought if I woke him up when he was, you know, uh, really ‘happy with what was going down’ he’d be totally into it.” She air quotes while emphasizing the words assuming Foggy can suss out the meaning. “But when he woke up he was just so terrified and he tried to get out from under me so fast I know he was just hurting himself but it was like he didn’t care cause he wanted away from me so badly,” Karen says, hands twisting together in her lap nervously.

Foggy takes a deep breath. Sure his gut reaction is to tear a strip off her loudly and maybe even indulge in Matt’s recent favorite pastime of yeeting some random office equipment off his desk. But no, getting all bent out of shape is absolutely not going to improve this situation and he’s definitely let his concern morph into anger much too often of late. Their office just isn’t big enough to contain two emotionally liable lawyers. Foggy centres himself and quickly arranges in his head exactly how he’d pull this apart if Karen was on the stand. Cause dammit this absolutely is going down but its going down really, really professionally.

“Let me see if I’ve got the facts clear here, Karen,” he begins. “You decided to hop into Matt’s bed, without an invitation. Then you decided to touch him, again with an invitation, all while Matt was dead asleep and wasn’t able to tell you if he didn’t want this? Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Karen admits in the smallest of voices without looking up.

“And you decided it was fine to just keep on going because Matt unconsciously responded?”

“Look I know it sounds bad-“

“Do you? Do you really get the implications here, Karen? Cause I don’t think you actually do. You wanna know what you did is called?”

Karen puts her head in her hands. Foggy decides he’s probably made enough impact now and just barely keeps himself from naming the offence lest he completely tear Karen apart. The message has clearly been received.  
“And you let HIM apologize to YOU?” Foggy asks. Inside he’s barely swallowing down his own guilt for blaming Matt for the situation. He knows he’s definitely messed this up. Large. Maybe not Karen large here but yeah, he totally feels like a five star asshole for yelling at Matt and demanding he fix the situation. 

“I’m sorry!” Karen says and she certainly looks it, tears forming in her eyes.

“Am I the one who needs to hear that?” Foggy points out. 

Karen jumps up and tears out of the office and yeah, now this is the second time she’s booted it away in tears. She can absolutely be tough as nails scary and frighteningly capable under the normal run of things but that is definitely not how its been the past few days. Foggy hopes she’s taken off in search of Matt but has no idea. Either way this go round he has no desire to chase after her. It doesn’t feel good making a lady cry and he know his father would be less than impressed with him right now but honestly? Right now all he cares about is Matt.

And speak of the devil Matt walks into his office and plops a coffee down on Foggy’s the desk. He and Karen must not have crossed paths in the lobby, though its entirely possible Matt avoided Karen without difficulty. Actually, given the timing its not just possible, its pretty damned likely.

Foggy has definitely not had enough time to organize his thoughts to figure how to broach this whole debacle with Matt and, most importantly, he has not had the chance to decide how to apologize for his own poor reaction of blaming Matt for the whole mess. Maybe Matt senses his hesitation but he doesn’t wait expectantly for any words from Foggy. Rather he sets down the donut box, fishes out the one he know is Foggy’s favorite and sets it atop the coffee cup with a small smile. When Foggy takes a deep breath, readying himself to launch into some kind of haphazard apology, Matt cuts him off with a ‘no’ quick shake of his head. Foggy belatedly realizes Matt may very well have heard the entire preceding conversation between himself and Karen. Whether he did or not he does not look upset and keeps giving Foggy a reassuring smile before scooping up the box of donuts and silently leaving the room. A moment later he returns and silently slides a business card across Foggy’s desk, then heads out, closing the door quietly behind himself. Foggy picks it up and sees its for a nearby florist, presumably where Matt got Karen’s flowers earlier that morning. Foggy looks at the card for a moment before flicking it directly into the recycle bin. Matt may well have had the good grace not to turn Foggy’s words of, “You need to fix this,” back on him but that doesn’t mean Foggy is about to buy Karen flowers. She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t change the locks and toss the contents of her desk onto the sidewalk. 

Foggy munches down his victory donut, very aware it does not taste as good as usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm being really, really careful in how I word things solely cause I wrote this on the work computer and the last thing I need is somebody accusing me of writing porn on here. I think its clear what I'm implying without spelling things out explicitly?


	7. Marshall (or, its not a stupid solution if it works)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something lighter to make up for last chapters seriousness.

Karen calls in sick the next day by way of an email. Foggy would honestly rather not even deal with her at the moment so he’s not exactly put out being down an employee for the day. Matt doesn’t seem to care one way or another, just asks Foggy to set the incoming calls to his office phone which Foggy does though he says he will switch it to his own phone for the afternoon. Matt waters Karen’s flowers. They go on about their day as normal.

By the next day Foggy has regained his inner chill. It helps that Karen was not in his face the day before and that Matt had been calm and focused on work, totally not hucking office supplies around or throwing mini shit fits. When Foggy arrives in the morning he sees Karen and Matt holed up in Matt’s office but there’s no raised voices, nothing is going flying and nobody is in tears so he leaves them to it and starts on his own work. By mid morning he’s got stuff to discuss with Matt and so heads to his office and plops down in the chair opposite the desk. And that’s about the time he notices something new on Matt’s desk. 

Matt’s desk is normally completely and totally boring. It usually has exactly no personal effects tucked away amongst the paper files and various pieces of equipment. Foggy has been trying for years to get him to put something, anything that’s fun and not directly work related on there but no matter what he gives him it gets tucked away into a drawer and the desk stays sad and boring. And he’s said this repeatedly from the time they shared a dorm up until as recently as a few weeks ago. He’s gone so far as to insist the state of the desk makes him depressed FOR Matt, just seeing it all sad and “worky” but to no avail. All fun, decorative and not directly tied to work items are always stashed away despite the fact that Matt would never actually have to look at them.

So it comes as a surprise to see there’s a new addition that’s definitely not work related. And Foggy instantly fears for its safety cause its definitely the right size and placement to be the next victim of Matt’s inner house cat channeled rage.

“Uh, what is that?” he asks, files in hand instantly forgotten.

“It’s a fish,” Matt says sounding decidedly happy about this new addition.

“Yeah but … why?”

“Karen got him for me. She said he’s very pretty. He’s a betta fish and he can breath air!”

“He is pretty,” Foggy confirms, still not getting the why or how of this random addition to Matt’s desk. He thinks this is possibly the stupidest thing anybody has ever bought Matt given that he can’t see it and obviously shouldn’t touch it. Or at least he thinks that right up until Matt puts a finger against the little glass bowl exactly where the fish’s face is. He proceeds to somehow get said fish to follow his finger around the bowl as he traces a path against the glass. So that answers that – Matt can definitely tell where the fish is within the bowl. When he stops moving his finger the fish proceeds to pretty much ram his little face against the glass and puff up all his fins like it wants to go into battle with the offending digit. And somehow Matt’s able to sense the reaction cause he promptly gets an idiotic grin on his face as the fish silently rages in his little glass prison.  
Okay sure, maybe this is not such a bad idea after all. Maybe Matt will be less likely to keep throwing shit if there’s something breakable and alive at hand. Maybe its will help curb that impulse.

“You know you have to name him, right?” 

Matt looks terribly serious as he withdraws the finger and the fish stops his concentrated attack of the glass.

After a moment Matt announces, “Thurgood Marshall,” nodding to himself.

“Of course,” Foggy says, head shaking but a fond smile creeps across his face.

As it turns out Matt ends up adoring the fish and after the first time the glass bowl almost gets chucked across the room several weeks later, Matt reins in his temper at the last possible second and carefully sets down the bowl. He literally apologizes to the fish. Out loud. Unbelievably, it does seem to mostly cure him of the propensity for throwing random shit around the office. If for no other reason than that, the fish becomes a welcome mascot and a running joke. When Matt gets too fired up both Foggy and Karen take to suggesting (or fake reminding if a client is present) that Matt has a meeting with Mr. Marshall in his office. Surprisingly, Matt doesn’t seem to find this condescending and actually does go disappear into his office for awhile to calm down and play with the fish. Though neither Foggy nor Karen can figure out how, Matt inexplicably trains Marshall to take wild leaps above the water surface to jump through hoops made of bent paperclips. Its not long before Karen takes the in-office joke live and literally starts answering the phone, “Nelson, Murdock, Page and Marshall,” which amuses all of them more than it should. Things only start to get awkward when a client insists on personally meeting their paralegal Mr. Marshall to thank him for all his hard work on her case. Foggy, who started the story that Marshall was a behind the scenes assistant to Matt, scrambles up a story that Mr. Marshall, while being a brilliant legal assistant, has crippling social anxiety and is thus unable to meet with clients. He says they value their employee so very much for his skills but respect his considerable mental health impairments, poor guy would not likely be employable anywhere else, but they are, as a firm, committed to offering an employment opportunity to him. Its all fun and games till a local paper gets wind of the tall tale and wants to do a feature on their inclusive hiring practices… but that’s another story entirely.

All of which is to say Matt adores the fish in a way they never saw coming and the effects of the tiny mascot turn out to be overwhelmingly positive.

While Foggy never hears a word of what was said between the two, he decides Karen has adequately made up for her mistakes with Matt by offering a very well received apology gift.


	8. Throwing Axes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter exists 95% to play with the mental image of Matt dressed up as described and 5% to advance the plot :) Every time I see ads for axe throwing at a local bar I so want to go. It just sounds so absurd and wildly unsafe to mix with alcohol consumption but they keep doing it so it must be popular/fun.

So things had, by in large, resolved themselves at the offices of Nelson, Murdock, Page (and Marshall). But Foggy decided that nevertheless they needed to do some kind of team building exercise. And he decided it had to be better than just drinks at Josie’s. He floated the idea for Maggie who, to his surprise, had agreed it was a good plan. For as often as she’d cut down what he said she was equally supportive when she decided he was on the right track. And she fully agreed some time away from the office where they could reconnect in a positive way was an excellent idea for the trio. He still can’t decide why her opinion and support matter so much to him, after all she’s Matt’s mom, not his own. But he can’t deny getting her approval feels really good in some deep and profound way he can’t articulate.   
So Foggy is plenty full of enthusiasm and hope when he lays out his plan for a little team building fun. Both the other employees look at him like he’s grown another head but neither outright refuses. 

“Okay, yup. We’re in,” Matt answers for himself and Karen (who nods). “What do you want us to do?”

And this is where the rubber meets the road. Foggy may have come up with the idea but he’s decided he’s going to (force) get Matt to plan this. He still feels like Matt’s had the roughest deal of late and if any of them need to do something to decrease tension its Matt. He may have stopped tossing things around and there have been no more phone calls from Brett about Daredevil’s nighttime activities but Matt’s not any less tense than he was before, with the possible exception of his weirdly adorable fishy playtimes - which on some level still floors Foggy. Matt is a lot of things – driven and intense and really, really violent during off work hours. But damn, he’s just way more relaxed when he’s around that little fish. 

“You pick what we’re going to do, Matt.”

“Me? What? No, this is your idea, Foggy.”

“We drew straws and decided it – you get first pick.”

“Uh, I didn’t draw straws. Karen?”

Karen just gives a confused noise but fails to back up either of them in any substantial way.

“Yup see, its decided,” Foggy barrels on, plowing over any objections. “Matt, figure out some kind of activity we can all do together. Uh, maybe not Marshall though cause he needs to stay and guard the office.”

“Well … we could go to –“

“No! Josie’s doesn’t count,” he cuts off Matt knowing exactly what the suggestion was going to be before the words even had a chance to leave his friend’s mouth. “Something different. Something more special.”

“Uhh,” Matt flounders, caught on the spot.

“Go. Research. Or brainstorm with Marshall or whatever. But tomorrow morning we’re meeting at 9am and you’re going to have an awesome idea for us,” Foggy insists like there’s just no other option here.

Matt now has a deer in the headlights look on his face but he’s clearly gotten Foggy’s message that this is not optional and seems fairly important to his partner.  
“Okay, Fogs. Yeah, I’ll come up with something,” he agrees, giving Foggy’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

………………….

“Axe throwing? This an actual thing?” Foggy asks, completely confused. He’s not regretting giving activity choosing duties to Matt but he is questioning his friend’s sanity at the moment.

“Yes!” Matt says, looking more than a little pleased. “There a bar in Brooklyn, they’re on Degraw street and they offer this. You just throw axes at the targets.”

“But in a bar? Like where everybody’s all liquored up?”

“Yeah!” Matt says, clearly sold on the idea. 

“This doesn’t seem just a little unsafe to you?” Foggy can’t help but point this out, though he should well know by now, drawing attention to a lack of safety of things is not going to be even remotely effective as a deterrent to Matt.

“Um, I’m not sure I’m strong enough to throw an axe?” Karen points out.

“You definitely are, Karen,” Matt says smiling at her. “And anyway, you can choose a hatchet that’s smaller if you want. But honestly, I really want to hear you whip an axe around.”

“Um, yeah, that’s weird, Matt. You’re being really weird about this,” she points out. Matt does seem overly enthused with his idea.

“What on earth made you think this was a good idea?” Foggy asks. He hates to shit on his friend’s parade but really, he did NOT expect Matt would come up with anything this … interesting when he forced making plans on him. “They’re going to get one look at you – sunglasses, cane and all and there’s not a chance in hell they’ll let you do this.”

“Oh, I can TOTALLY get away with this,” Matt assures him, loads of confidence in his tone. “I ditch the glasses and cane and I can definitely escape their notice.”

“Bullshit,” Foggy calls. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a dick but outside of your ‘nighttime activities’ there’s just no way you can pass for sighted.”

“I can and I have. Seriously. I CAN do this Foggy. It’s far enough away from Hell’s Kitchen that they won’t know who Matt Murdock is. I can do this. I’ve done it before and nobody called me out on it.”

“When?”

“Uh,” Matt hesitates, enthusiasm finally dropping several notches. “I may have been technically impersonating you at the time…”

“That shit with the prison? And by the way, don’t think I’m not still pissed about that whole thing. Do you even know what a pain in the ass it is to cancel all your cards when your wallet goes missing?”

“I said I’m sorry,” Matt reminds him (no, he actually never did but at least implied it) and tries to quickly skirt the issue. “But I did it – they didn’t call me out on anything – must have totally bought I could see where I was going. And I’ve done it a couple other times without a fuss. Seriously.”

“Okay fine. Let’s say you can somehow convince them you can see what you’re doing. How in hell are you going to find the targets? They don’t make sounds. They’re not moving. They’re not moving, right? Please tell me its not hurling sharp objects at like bunny rabbits or something?”

“No! Its wooden targets – nothing alive. Like dart boards but huge … I think. I’m not totally sure, I couldn’t see the pictures online. But don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. This is totally do-able.”

“Karen?” Foggy asks, somehow hoping she might talk sense into Matt.

“I can drink and throw shit? I mean, I’m not exactly seeing the downside here. I’ve got some inner rage that needs letting out.”

“My sweet, delicate flower,” Foggy says, shaking his head, mock disappointment in his voice. “Alright Murdock, you win. Go call for reservations or whatever. Nobody better come crying to me if they accidentally manage to hack off a limb!”

……………….

Foggy is not altogether surprised that Matt’s really pumped for this. He had certainly seemed enthused when he’d presented the idea. But really, he hadn’t foreseen just how committed Matt would be.

Karen had volunteered to drive (thank God cause she’s the only one with a car it would have been a royal pain in the ass to get there otherwise). She’d picked up Foggy first since they live fairly close to each other, and then they drove to Matt’s apartment. They’d headed upstairs to grab him.

“Holy shit,” Karen says, not quite under her breath when she gets a look at Matt.

Of yeah, he was totally committed to this night. He’d hollered it was open when they’d approached his door so they let themselves in. Who knew what in the hell he had been doing up there but he’d slowly made his way down the stairs from the roof access looking terribly smug. For a guy who readily admitted he had no idea what he looked like, Matt clearly knows exactly what effect he had on his audience. He’s wearing a red and black buffalo checked flannel shirt that is most definitely a size too small. Foggy recognizes it from school when it had fit Matt fine given he had been a good thirty pounds less of muscle back then. Now it’s tightly clinging to his chest, buttons straining over his pecs and totally highlighting his ripped chest. His jeans, that Foggy is sure he’s never seen Matt in even once before, are light wash, artfully ripped at the knees and all but painted on, leaving nothing to the imagination. He’s finished it off with a pair of Timberland yellow boots that Foggy suspects are brand new cause the style of them fits neither Matt Murdock nor Daredevil but totally supports the whole rugged, hipster, lumberjack vibe. Speaking of that, Matt had gone an extra few days without shaving, scruff dangerously edging on beard territory. His hair is an artfully dishevelled mess that probably took forever to make look like neglected, messy bedhead. Foggy’s pretty sure he can actually hear Karen manually lifting her jaw off the floor. 

Matt pauses at the landing and Foggy is certain he’s reading their reactions, using them in lieu of the mirror he can’t see. The smug ratchets up a notch as Matt makes no effort to hide his grin.

“Ready to go?” he asks with all kinds of fake chill.

…………..

The ride had been uneventful but parking was a nightmare. It ended up being a couple blocks walk which neither surprised and nor really irritated any of them. Matt lead the way, no cane or being attached to anybody’s arm tonight. It was weird as shit for both Foggy and Karen to see him navigate the street unaided. They were plenty use to Matt moving around familiar spaces with ease but somehow even in unfamiliar territory he was avoiding all manner of random shit with seeming ease. Raised brick flower beds on the sidewalk? Yup, not a problem. Matt would easily course correct and avoid whacking his shins by what appeared to be mere inches. Random uneven sidewalk? Nope, that was not posing the tripping hazard one would expect as he easily stepped over each rough edge with ease, though if you watched really closely he was probably taking his steps slightly higher than needed and erring on the side of caution in those spots. Fold out chalkboard bar signs on the sidewalk? Those were somehow avoided too though he seemed to get dangerously close to collision before sidestepping each one at the last possible moment. The only huge tell, and this would of course only be noticeable to Karen and Foggy, was that he was totally silent. No conversation whatsoever and it was fairly obvious that this little game of navigation was likely taking all his focus so there just was none left over for idle chit chat. 

“Yup, this is it,” Karen announces when it looks like Matt might walk past the bar they were searching for. Matt makes a quick u-turn back and rejoins them.

“Okay yes,” Foggy says, “I’m impressed, Matt. Does make me feel like a bit of an ass for leading you around for so many years though.”

“Ah Foggy, you have NO idea how much easier it was for me when you did that. Believe me, letting me shut my brain off for walks was a delight,” Matt reassures him, impulsively pulling Foggy into a quick half hug.

Foggy chokes down a swell of emotions, “Alright, well we’re here, let’s go put ourselves in unnecessary mortal danger around drunks throwing sharp, heavy objects.”

“Yes!” Matt says enthusiastically as though the description made the activity even more enticing. Hell, Foggy thinks, it probably does for him.

…………….

As it turns out Matt was right and nobody even questioned his sight. He very carefully pulled off any lack of eye contact as just a bit of shyness, carefully ducking his head as though he was slightly nervous when needed though Karen and Foggy knew this to be complete and total bullshit. Their instructor was, thankfully, easily swayed by Matt’s request to walk up to the target and feel it. Matt said some line of crap about it improving his aim which was easily accepted when in reality it was the only way he’d have a clue where he was trying to hit. Thankfully, the paint on the target lines was plenty thick and Matt made quick work of feeling out the info he needed while raising little to no suspicion. A couple of practice throws and they were ready to go.

Thankfully they have their own lane (or whatever it was called – Foggy doesn’t have a clue) which makes him marginally less concerned about an errant throw ending up embedded in his back. Surprisingly all three of them end up being fairly accurate throwers after a few initial missed shots. Unsurprisingly, Matt is super accurate at hitting the bullseye of the target. And that is not going unnoticed. 

“Okay don’t freak out but you are totally catching some major attention from a complete hottie at your 4 o’clock,” Foggy informs Matt helpfully. And, of course, Matt puffs up and can’t resist showing off even more after hearing that bit of news. Foggy also notices their instructor, Lance, sneaking glances at Karen as he makes his way around the lanes, helping out. And it doesn’t seem like he’s terribly interested in the results of her throws. 

On their last round the instructor brings out an huge axe like the one’s firemen use. Matt looks thoroughly delighted as he grabs the enormous tool (weapon?). Karen declines when he offers her first crack, citing the size and weight of the thing but Matt chucks it with almost too much force, clearly delighted when it embeds itself far into centre of the target. Their instructor is impressed as he struggles briefly to pull it loose of the wooden target. But even as he congratulates Matt, Lance is clearly far more busy making eyes at Karen. Karen is doing it right back now and Foggy does not miss the way she keeps sneaking glances at Matt like she expects a reaction from him. Matt is wholly oblivious to this interaction since, A) he can’t see it and B) is likely paying zero attention for it, far too wrapped up in the fun of hucking heavy, sharp shit around.   
Foggy leaves to find them a table so they can get their drink on now that they’re done. Karen is well into a conversation with the instructor, flirting and seeming to enjoy the attention. And Matt vanishes when Foggy is about to call his friends over. Foggy places drink orders with the waitress, easily guessing what his friends want. He pulls his phone out while waiting on both the drinks to arrive and his friends to migrate to the table in their own time. 

They’re were all having fun and Foggy can’t decide who to text first – Marci, cause he’s told her all about the plans for the night (even if that info was way more enthusiastically given than received) or Maggie cause he wanted her to know his plan has worked out, and also to know that Matt is having a good time. He ends up texting them both. Maggie gets back to him first, says little but succinctly expresses her happiness that things had worked out. Marci responds with a mostly unrelated and very NC-17 response about exactly what she has planned for the remainder of the night once Foggy gets home. Foggy squirms in his seat and decides no matter what they are leaving by 12. Marci can be patient to a point but he absolutely does not want her starting without him and he knows its not an idle threat. Foggy smiles to himself as he tucks away his phone and looks around for his friends. He immediately spots Matt ducking out of … wait was that the ladies room? Holy fuck – that’s the chick who had been making eyes at him earlier exiting right behind Matt. And clearly that had panned out – Matt’s shirt is now literally buttoned all wrong, his hair is (even more of) a complete mess and there’s a smear of pink lipstick down one side of his jaw. And yup, the smug look is back times 10. Isn’t hard to figure what went down as Matt makes his way to Foggy.

“You are a dog!” Foggy says sounding totally approving despite his choice of words. “I don’t know if I’m disgusted or impressed here.”

“You can be both,” Matt says, smile on his face. He is clearly not regretting carrying on in the bathroom like someone ten years younger. He easily locates the beer Foggy had ordered him and chugs half down. “Don’t even talk to me about that being unsanitary cause I do know. I just totally do NOT care right now.”

“Tell me you got a number?”

“What for?” Matt asks and Foggy is instantly transported back almost a decade by his blasé response. He’s not super surprised but just a little disappointed.

“Have you seen Karen?” Foggy asks knowing that of course the answer will be no, for multiple reasons at this point. “She was talking to that instructor guy, Lance earlier.”

Matt pauses, does that weird thing where he freezes then angles his head that Foggy knows means he’s focusing on something. “Still with him,” Matt says. Then, “Eww.”

“Do I want to know?” Foggy asks, still not catching sight of Karen despite taking a good look around.

“No.” All traces of his earlier smug satisfaction have been wiped off his face instantly. “I’ll keep track,” he says, sounding suddenly very, very unhappy.

Foggy watches as Matt’s hand clenches hard around his now empty beer bottle. Matt’s fingers go white as he grips it really hard. It’s difficult to hear over the music and general din of the busy bar but he can swear he hears an actual grown emanating from Matt’s chest.

“Put that down before you break it,” he warns Matt, really not fancying a trip to emergency this evening to have pieces of broken glass extracted from his friend’s hand. Without the usual red glasses to hide behind Matt’s murderous look is unobscured. Whatever he’s hearing is well and truly pissing him off. “Is there a danger thing going on?” Foggy asks, genuinely needing to know if something is about to go down. 

“No, no danger,” Matt states, refusing to put down the bottle his left hand is still doing its best to crush. “He’s not … hurting her.”

“But we’re still not happy about things?” Foggy asks kinda wishing he didn’t have to rely on whatever weird sensory surveillance Matt has going on.

“No,” Matt grinds out. He looks ready to kill though. 

“So if there’s no danger then maybe we should like, let her have her privacy?” Foggy suggests. From what he can gather Karen’s night is possibly panning out as well as Matt’s had earlier. (And as well as Foggy anticipates his own night ending once he gets home).

Matt literally snarls but chokes it down when the waitress arrives at their table. He orders a double shot of whiskey and Foggy decides to stick with another beer. After a few more moments, Matt noticeably relaxes. Karen arrives at the table very shortly after.

“Hey boys,” she greets them, drink in hand. “How’s our team building outing? Success?” She looks flushed and is smiling hugely, the evening’s activities clearly agreeing very much with her.

Foggy reminds himself yet again that he has something awesome waiting at home, and if her texts were anything to go by, Marci would literally be greeting him at the door wearing not a stitch, plenty hot and bothered by the time he makes it home. 

The waitress arrives with their drinks.

“To Nelson, Murdock, Page and Marshall!” Foggy toasts, trying like mad to ignore Matt’s still barely contained seething rage (OMG, please don’t be planning to beat the shit out of poor, innocent Lance) and Karen’s feigned obliviousness (did she even like Lance or was that all just to rile up Matt?). 

They all clink glasses and Foggy decides to consider the evening more of a success than a failure. And he silently sends up a prayer that Monday morning at work will not be as awkward as he fears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karen gets to pick the next team building adventure in Working Vacation...

**Author's Note:**

> Ah so there's a pile of crap that occurs between August 26th and Flipping Turtles. Not sure I'm gonna bother filling that in - kinda focused more on subsequent events. Just know time has gone by, some things have happened and that are eluded to but not really expanded on (ie. Matt's pneumonia, Foggy and Maggie's developing friendship, etc.).


End file.
